A social network, in general, is a social structure made up of entities, such as individuals or organizations that are connected by one or more types of interdependency or relationships, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge, or prestige. In more recent years, social networks have taken advantage of the Internet. There are social-networking systems existing on the Internet in the form of social-networking websites. A social networking system, such as a social networking website, enables its users to interact with it and with each other through the system.
The social networking system may create and store a record, often referred to as a user profile, in connection with the user. The user profile may include a user's demographic information, communication channel information, and personal interests. The social networking system may also create and store a record of a user's relationship with other users in the social networking system (e.g., social graph), as well as provide services (e.g., wall-posts, photo-sharing, or instant messaging) to facilitate social interaction between users in the social networking system. The social networking system may also create and store user preferences.
The advent of social networking, instant messaging, and ubiquitous wireless data networks allows individuals to select from a plurality of methods to communicate with their contacts. In the past, communications between individuals were limited to physical mail, wired telephones, fax, and wireless telephones. However, with the expansion of the Internet, coupled with mobile devices capable of maintaining a data connection to the Internet, users may select from a plethora of communications means, such as: cellular phone calls, e-mail to multiple accounts, multiple instant messaging protocols, twitter messages, voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls, video chats, SMS and MMS messages, social networking messages, voicemail, push-to-talk (PTT), and dedicated notification-based message clients such as the Blackberry Messenger and Kik Messenger.
Wireless communications used in carrier-grade networks usually consist of a cell-based infrastructure where all mobile device nodes must communicate directly with a network base station. Alternatively, mobile device nodes may utilize a mobile ad-hoc network for wireless communication, where any mobile device node can communication with any other node, either directly or through multiple hops. Current wireless developments seek to improve Quality of Service so that carrier-grade service may be attained in a heterogeneous wireless environment.